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Ask anyone in the restaurant industry and they’ll tell you they’ve been harassed on the job, abused, touched inappropriately by a “pervy” chef or hazed as the newest member of a kitchen team.

Chefs, servers and cooks bristle at memories of being slapped with a cleaning rag purposely dipped in the deep fryer, forced to pick up tongs surreptitiously warmed in the oven or groped by a superior passing just a little too close during dinner service.

Forget about the yelling, off colour remarks and f-bombing.

This culture seems to be the norm in professional kitchens — even a celebrated part of the job, encouraged by food celebrities like Anthony Bourdain and Gordon Ramsay, who lure us with their food-spurred rampages. Bully chefs are hot. We consider it entertainment.

As Alexandra Feswick, a local female chef puts it: “I don’t think that Ramsay invented that mentality for TV. He is objectifying something that already exists.”

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Just the act of professional cooking, which is “elemental” and fuelled by fire, steel and “the busy intensity of waiting hungry customers,” says chef activist Joshna Maharaj, perpetuates the stereotype of “chefs as tough, thick skinned, potty mouthed pirates with the burns and scars” to match.

Some unseemly parts of the job were exposed earlier this week when The Star published allegations of sexual harassment at Weslodge restaurant.

Former pastry chef Kate Burnham filed an application to Ontario’s Human Rights Tribunal alleging she was regularly abused by three former chefs at the King St. W modern saloon between July 2012 and January 2014. The claims have not been proven at the tribunal. Weslodge owners say they didn’t know about the alleged incidents because of a breakdown in communication and they “regret” it.

Reached by the Star for the original story, one of the three chefs said he had “no comment.” Another responded through his lawyer that he “denies all the allegations” Neither the third chef or his lawyer have responded to repeated requests by the Star for comment.

Industry insiders say the alleged incidents at Weslodge are extreme — but agree “kitchen culture” can be oppressive, racist, homophobic and sexist.

News of the allegations has sparked a conversation on Twitter, in blogs and spearheaded a movement for change with restaurateurs, like Anthony Rose sharing stories of the violence and sexism they’ve witnessed in their careers.

There’s a fine line between joking and harassing, they say, between loudly correcting a mistake before a dish goes out and bringing a cook to tears for forgetting the garnish.

Social taboos, such as public embarrassment, are woven into the fabric of professional kitchens, says Feswick, chef du cuisine at The Drake Hotel.

Taking criticism and pain like a man proves you’re willing to slog it out in the hot, high stress trenches with your comrades and it’s unacceptable to show weakness of any kind, she says. “You’re working with guys that hate it when they’re girlfriends act like that. So it’s not allowed.”

Christine Walker, academic chair of George Brown Chef School, says things have improved dramatically in the last three decades — more women than ever are behind professional burners; 50 per cent of her students are female.

Certain unsavoury aspects of the culture persist, she believes, because kitchens are organized according to an age old brigade system, where the man with the tallest hat — and meanest sneer — runs the show. She doesn’t expect the hierarchy to change anytime soon.

The tone of the kitchen is set from the top down, says Chris Sanderson, executive chef at Rose and Sons and Big Crow. “Whatever the chef does, the sous chef does, the cooks do and so on.”

But so many cooks these days — including the ones running the show — are often young and inexperienced, he says. Put them, unsupervised, behind hot stoves with a lot of pressure and a bunch of guys their own age and the situation devolves — fast.

Once they’re trained in a bad milieu they’ll think it’s acceptable, even normal, and take that behaviour to the next place they work, he says — where there may or may not be anti-harassment policies.

Restaurants are “largely unregulated workplaces” with little or no monitoring of how staff behave and treat one another, Maharaj says, and kitchen safety — physical or emotional — ultimately comes down to the whim of each restaurateur and whether or not there is enough time or money to prioritize it.

Chef Adam Weisberg says he left Weslodge restaurant in 2013 after only two months on the job because of the culture, which he describes as “childish” with “very young kids” behaving inappropriately and owners who paraded “young girls through the kitchen” while the 20-something cooks looked on in awe.

Weisberg, 36, wasn’t surprised to witness chefs mistreating colleagues, including Burnham, he says, whom he took aside and offered advice. Though he likes to banter and have fun at work, he says, he also wants to concentrate on his craft: cooking food and Weslodge’s kitchen wasn’t entirely about that. “I love the culture, the camaraderie of kitchens,” he says, “but there’s a limit.”

When restaurateurs set those limits, word gets around. That’s why industry people want to work for Rose.

Climbing the ranks at high profile Toronto restaurants, for chefs he describes as “assholes,” Rose decided early on that he didn’t want to become one himself. Once, a chef he worked for picked up a pizza Rose had made and spat: “this is disgusting” before throwing it across the kitchen.” Another time, he walked into the chef’s office to find him with two young servers, lifting their tops to “compare breasts.”

Today, Rose, 42, won’t tolerate any shenanigans at his four, soon to be six, eateries. If he hears a questionable remark among his staff he’ll say: “keep the language down and concentrate on the food.”

If the music is inappropriate, he’ll shut it off. When it comes to adding staff to his team, his philosophy is “slow to hire, quick to fire,” he says. Rose strives to surround himself with “amazing people, like-minded cooks who fit in with the culture he has created,” he says. “We want an atmosphere where you can talk and share ideas and respect each other. It has to come from the top down.”

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